The present invention relates to a restraining device for wires and/or cables and, more particularly, to a restraining device for providing strain relief and preventing unintentional disconnection of electrical wires, especially computer accessory wires and/or cables.
Personal computers, for example, those of the desktop and notebook types, have been well developed and are commercially available. Many computer systems, including personal computers, workstations and servers, are designed to have multiple peripheral devices included in the system. Generally, a typical personal computer system includes a number of peripheral devices that provide input and output (I/O) for the system. Such peripheral devices include compact disc read only memory (CD-ROM) drives, hard disc drives (HDD), floppy disc drives, digital versatile disk drives (DVD), keyboards, mouses and printers.
The primary method of expanding the functional ability of personal computers is through the use of external devices that connect to the personal computer via a signal transmission device. The most common signal transmission devices are wires or cables that connect to the personal computer, such as a power cord, a USB cable, an IEEE 1394 cable, etc. Such wires and/or cables are subject to pulls in everyday use that place strain on the connectors, resulting in unintentional disconnection of the wire and/or cable and damage to the connectors. This is especially true of computers that operate in a rugged environment, such as in military service.
Known devices include the PCMCIA card cable strain relief mechanism used on the MSD-B, and wire routing Kwik Klips manufactured by Richco. These devices use a loop under which the cables are placed, the loop then being pushed closed and held in place by ratcheting features in the loop and a base. However, the PCMCIA card cable strain relief mechanism is too large physically for the available areas in some applications, and the Kwik Klips are mounted by pressure sensitive adhesive, which does not meet the life expectancy requirements of some applications and does not work with cables having small diameters.